Radiation therapy involves medical procedures that selectively expose certain areas of a human body, such as cancerous tumors, to high doses of radiation. Radiation may also be used to obtain images of the patient during an imaging procedure.
In some medical procedures involving use of radiation, one or more cameras may be set up to perform one or more functions during the medical procedures. For example, a camera may be used to monitor a position of a patient as the patient is being treated by radiation. The camera may also be used to determine a breathing phase of a patient as the patient is being treated by treatment radiation, and/or imaged by diagnostic radiation. In some cases, one or more cameras may be used to detect possible collision between a treatment machine and the patient.
Camera used with radiation procedure is exposed to radiation, which can damage the camera gradually over time.
In accordance with one or more embodiments described herein, a quantitative measure of the camera defect and an automatic image analysis method that generates this quantitative measure from camera images (e.g., those from a live video stream) are provided. Such technique is advantageous because the measure may be obtained without requiring a user to run regularly scheduled tests for the camera.